My master thesis requires a lot of maths and linear algebra. For the purpose I use SciPy. It is a very good library and the fact that it is in python makes it very flexible. The problem is that it is (most of the times) just a wrapper around other older libraries like the famous LAPACK.

I’m now at a point where I have to decompose a projection matrix to a rotation and a translation matrix. This can be done easily with RQ Decomposition. RQ decomposition basically breaks a matrix M into 2 matrixes R,Q so that R * Q = M with R being an upper triangular matrix.

This function is part of LAPACK but it is not wrapped by SciPy! Of all the functions it had to be this one! To add more to the irony the QR(not the same as RQ) Decomposition is wrapped! You will say it is open source, add it. Fine but now I have to install a build environment for SciPy witch is a lot of work. It requires Fortran, C, LAPACK and lots of other libraries… a nightmare…

edit : RQ implemented!